Mainframe Experimentalism: early digital computing and the experimentalarts, edited by Douglas Kahn and Hannah Higgins.

We invite proposals for an interdisciplinary collection on the encounter ofartists, musicians, poets and writers, and filmmakers working withinavant-garde, experimental and artistically innovative traditions withmainframe computers and institutionally-bound digital technologies duringthe 1960s and 1970s.

We are interested in three classes of materials: (1) substantive accounts ofartistic engagements, critical motivations and contexts, institutional andcollaborative settings within the social, political and culturaltransformations of the period; (2) discussions of representations ofcomputing during the period by individuals who would be of interest toartists, and (3) original documents, including unrealized plans.

Topics might include the digital work of John Whitney, Jackson MacLow, StanVanderbeek, John Cage and Jerry Hiller¹s HPSCHD, OULIPO, among many others.

The editors have already assembled papers and commitments by BenjaminBuchloh (Columbia University) on Alison Knowles¹ House of Dust poem, HannahHiggins (University of Illinois-Chicago) on the intermedia aspects of theHouse of Dust, Douglas Kahn (University of California-Davis) on James Tenneyat Bell Labs, Christoph Cox (Hampshire University) on Alvin Lucier¹s NorthAmerican Time Capsule, Owen Smith (University of Maine) on Dick Higgins¹Computers for the Arts, and Edward Shanken (Savannah College of Art andDesign).